At a rail maintenance and construction job site, rail workers in close proximity to the railroad tracks need to be made aware of emergency situations as quickly and effectively as possible. In previous and well known approaches, a designated person acts as a lookout for incoming trains. When the person sees an approaching train on the tracks, the person may warn others by verbal communication (yelling or talking), or by visual communication (raising a flag or sign).
The primary disadvantage of this method is that rail work is frequently loud, where digging, hammering, tamping, and other loud-noise producing acts will frequently drown out any verbal communication from the lookout. Also, due to the length and bends of certain tracks, the lookout's view may be obstructed so that the lookout cannot know for sure if all of the rail workers at a job site had received the verbal or visual warnings. Track supervisors and track workers do have radio communications but those communications do not provide warnings and in many cases ambient noise in the work areas causes miscommunications. Therefore, there is a need for an improved rail worker protection and warning system at rail maintenance job sites and during track inspection using a failsafe way to communicate with confirmation from the dispatcher to the roadway worker in charge, lone worker or track inspector to the track workers that they are safely off the tracks before live trains can be allowed through where those personnel are operating on the tracks.